Business as usual at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth is about looking forward.

That was exactly the appearance as classes opened for the new academic year Wednesday. The rain that had soaked the region during the past couple of days abated. There were few clouds in the sky.

Students caught up with their peers outside, in the hallways and in the dining rooms, and met new and old professors. Other students had their eyes glued to their smartphones as they walked from one building to another.

A long line of students formed on the first floor of the Foster Administration Building to pick up new on-campus parking passes.

In the middle of the campus, on the grass, a “Dunk the Administrator” tank and booth were being set up. Students stirred coffees and chatted with friends and employees at the Corsair Cafe.

The university appeared far removed from the scenes on campus in the weekend that followed the bombings at the Boston Marathon. When it was discovered that one of the suspected bombers, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, had been a UMass Dartmouth student, the campus was locked down, and students and faculty were told to evacuate. Federal Bureau of Investigations officers and police descended upon UMass. Students lacking transportation, and a place to go, were bused to nearby hotels and Dartmouth High School.

A few days later, the campus reopened. The semester finished.

But five and a half months later, there was no indication in opening week that any bitter aftertaste from those events remained. Students instead said they were excited to see their friends, and talked about their new class schedules.

“I’m fired up,” said senior Corey Allison, from Taunton, near the MacLean Campus Center on Wednesday morning. “I just had one class so far.”

Allison and his teammates on the UMass Dartmouth baseball team said the events of last April were far behind them.

“It’s definitely a clean slate now,” Allison said. “And all of us came together then.”

“I agree with him completely,” added teammate and sophomore Russ Mangsen, from West Boylston. “When it happened, we came together as a school. We bonded.”

Senior Conor Zarek, from Leominster, said the campus seems “vibrant and full of life.”

When asked about last April, Zarek said, “I definitely think the past is behind us. I don’t think anyone is worried about it.”

He remembered spending that weekend at a friend’s home in Bedford, when the campus was shut down and evacuated, being “stuck for three days in the same clothes.”

“We were just the unfortunate ones. And we did the best we could ... and it was under control,” Zarek said, before heading off to his on-campus job in the library.

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Elsewhere, classrooms and lecture halls filled up. The parking lots were filled, and the cars of a few unlucky students were already ticketed for parking violations.

University officials said they were continuing their mission to educate and enrich their students.

“There hasn’t been much conversation,” said Williams, while holding a banner advertising “300 Chairs,” a large-scale version of musical chairs planned on campus. “Nobody is stuck on what happened in (the spring). How is that going to serve us to sit and to dwell on it?”

Fortier-Barnes reflected for a moment on last April and May, saying, “It was a different way to end the year. Commencement was different.”

Freshmen seemed focused on getting acclimated to their new learning and living spaces.

“Everyone’s really friendly. My professors are all really nice,” said Marissa DeLuca, a freshman nursing major from Taunton, outside the library.

Changes on campus

The campus has undergone a few changes, since the past semester. There are a handful of capital projects underway.

Mechanical engineering instructor Don Foster proudly showed off a previously underused space of the engineering building that will become the new IDEA Studio, an intended collaboration between engineering and arts students.

“A year ago, this looked like somebody’s basement. It was spider-ridden, dark and gloomy,” Foster said.

Now it’s filled with tables, desktop computers and a “green screen,” similar to the wall a meteorologist would stand in front of to give weather forecasts.

The studio will officially open in a few weeks. The goal is to foster interdisciplinary collaborations similar to those that would appear in a workplace setting, including successful corporations like Apple or Google.

Learning from it, and moving forward

“What that whole experience taught us was that we had the people and systems in place to respond well,” said UMass Dartmouth spokesman John Hoey.

University Chancellor Divina Grossman agreed. “We made the right decisions,” she said.

Based on the findings of the task force that had reviewed the campus shutdown, there are some other decisions in the works. They would result in policy and procedural changes that wouldn’t very likely alter the campus’ environment.

Those potential changes include expanding the jurisdictional authority of the on-campus police force — a decision that would ultimately be made in the Statehouse — and formalizing the informal relationships with local businesses and police forces that had been in place.